


en travesti

by Graculus



Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Gen, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-08-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-22 08:11:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/235974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Graculus/pseuds/Graculus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With a deep breath, JD Dunne climbed from the stagecoach headfirst into a world of trouble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Even by the time she got on the train, she was the person she'd always known she really was - not who her mother wanted her to be, that was certain, but she'd made herself stop caring about that a long time ago. The man who owned the livery stable hadn't cared whether she was Joanna or John, as long as the horses were clean and well-fed; she could tote a bale of hay as well as the next boy, which was all that mattered at the end of the day.

Now she was heading west, out to where no-one would know who she was, only who she wanted to be. What she wanted to be, from the moment she first picked up a dime novel, seeing her place firmly marked out in the heat and dust of the West alongside men who didn't hesitate to shoot anyone who stood in their way.

She'd waited while her mother lived, torn as she was; it had been a slow death, lingering on for weeks and months when every halt of breath seemed like the end and never was. Even though she knew her mother's image of her and her own could never reconcile, Joanna hadn't been able to tear herself away from her bedside, knowing there'd be time enough for her reality some time soon. Even if soon seemed an eternity away at times.

The novels were her only release, tucked inside 'improving' books for the sake of her mother's peace of mind as she sat at the side of her sickbed, she'd revelled in tales of desperate men and the towns they ruled with an iron fist.

And now it was real. All of it, the dusty main street where the stagecoach stopped once a day, laconic gunfighters with unreadable expressions on their face, everything she'd dreamed of every night in Boston. All real and all hers, if she had the nerve to take it.

"Hey, this ain't your stop!"

"Oh, it is now. This is why I came west."

With a deep breath, JD Dunne climbed from the stagecoach headfirst into a world of trouble.


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn't hard to fit in, not when the work done in a far-off Boston stables had developed muscles that fit with the person JD was inside. Without that, without the semi-shapeless suits that were the best that could be purchased along the way, in Boston or in a dozen nameless towns between there and here, it was easy to wonder if that was enough to get by. But then nobody looked too closely and that was the way JD liked it. 

Early on, everything had been an education - sorting out truth from fiction, the realities of day-to-day life in Four Corners from the dime novel fantasy of hard-drinking, hard-fighting men with little respect for the rule of law. 

It had been all too easy to get carried away, to set up as something different to that, taking on a silver badge that ought to mean something but rarely did, not out here. If Chris hadn't intervened, JD knew that they'd probably have buried him with it, probably without anyone knowing the truth about who he had once been, unless whoever washed his body for the grave cared to share their confusion on the subject. If that even happened here, where life was meant to be so much cheaper than the big cities back East. 

He learned fast, though not as fast as needed at times, not by the way Buck shook his head over him on a regular basis. Not by the way that he reacted to the idea of newcomers to the town, women who were - JD heard echoes of his mother's voice, ringing louder in his head than he'd ever expected would be the case these days - no better than they ought to be. It was difficult to really know what that meant, to separate the words themselves from the scornful tone that usually accompanied them and JD wondered at the sting in the tail they held, the judgement it was so easy to make. 

And then there was Casey. 

That was a whole new source of confusion, all sorts of feelings JD had never experienced before warring inside, a fight for survival which any of them might win in the end. At first, JD had wondered if Casey was more of a kindred spirit than she imagined herself to be, but then she'd started wearing dresses and the world had turned upside down again. It was easy to like Casey, to respect the woman who'd raised her, and JD didn't want to do anything to upset either of them though it seemed there was no difficulty in breaking that promise. 

There were probably words that could be said, an explanation that would make sense to Casey, but JD didn't know what they were. It could well be impossible for her to understand, growing up in Four Corners, that things weren't always as they appeared to be and that sometimes a tree would bear different fruit than you thought it would. Except that it was all about people, not trees, and JD wasn't sure how much mileage there was in talking about trees instead - you planted a tree and it gave you what you thought, so maybe that wasn't the best way to talk about who JD had been once and who he was now. 

He'd never said it to anyone, never had to say what he was because nobody asked. Nobody ever did, because what else could JD be than what he appeared to be? Anything else was an impossibility, especially here where things were relatively simple. 

Somehow, JD thought that Ezra would probably know the words if it ever needed explaining, because Ezra seemed to know all sorts of things that nobody else JD had ever met was able to talk about. The stories he told, sometimes, of far-off places he'd read about or even visited were enough to send JD to his bedroll, head spinning with the red and gold of a Chinese emperor's palace or the stone temples of some jungle temple he would never see. And maybe nobody else had ever seen these things either, because they were something made up, fiction like JD's dime novels and nothing more. 

Except they had the kick of truth about them, the tiny details that told JD these things, these places, were somewhere people had walked and lived and died. Somewhere like Four Corners, but more real in some ways, stronger colours and brighter light. 

Time, and a misplaced bullet, saved JD from awkward conversations till that bullet had been pulled out and the fever it left in its wake had died away. Nathan's eyes had been full of the knowledge of who JD was, who he had once been, but without the judgement that was its expected companion. 

"You're pretty weak," he said, sitting down on the side of the bed and helping JD cup hands around a tin mug full of water. "The bullet took some cloth in with it, brought a nasty infection along for the ride and we thought we'd lost you." His hands were warm, steadying the cup as JD drank and drank, feeling like the water was the best thing ever to pass his lips. "You'll have a scar," Nathan continued, frowning now. "But I'm told ladies love that kind of thing."

It was a peace offering, a tentative hand across the space between them - JD was still JD, still in some kind of odd relationship with Casey that neither of them really seemed to understand, still one of the seven lawmen protecting this place. 

"Guess we'll find out," JD said, strength ebbing like the water he'd just drunk. "Thanks, Nathan."

Nathan stood, taking the mug with him and looking down on JD for a long moment in silence. 

"Glad to see you doing better," he said finally, then turned away and let JD sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Posted as part of Mag7 Bingo on [](http://mag7daybook.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**mag7daybook**](http://mag7daybook.dreamwidth.org/) for the prompt 'Can you ever really know someone?'.


End file.
